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But they'd have never lost power or fallen into the atmosphere if not for Khan breaking his word and attacking once he'd beamed (what he thought were) his people over. They'd have just floated there still with power and Kirk wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself.

Had they not betrayed their deal with Khan and shot him, maybe he wouldn't have turned on them like that once he had control of the ship. "This is a new universe. Things are supposed to be different." is how its been put by fans of the film. The same logic applies.

We can continue to grasp at straws with the gigantic plotholes, or we can agree that the film wasn't perfect just like every other Star Trek film out there. Its like when the community was trying to figure out why old klingons aren't like new klingons. You can come up with all the wild stories trying to explain it all you want, but the truth is it was some decision made during the writing/make-up/production stages that resulted in an inconsistency.

"Star Trek Into Darkness" is the most successful "Star Trek" movie ever made. It is, in terms of what it took at the box office and how many people went to see it. More people saw that film than any iteration of "Star Trek" that existed before. That is probably slightly annoying to some "Star Trek" fans -- which I totally understand.

His claim that more people saw STID than any other Star Trek movie is true. But it might surprise people that if you take the worldwide grosses of the first Star Trek film in 1979 and the most recent in 2013... and you adjust the gross of TMP for ticket price inflation, you find that roughly the same number of tickets were sold:

ST: TMP: 55,378,486STID: 55,605,904

So yes, it sold a few hundred thousand more tickets. But when one considers that there are 2.6 billion more people in the world today than in 1979 and there are about 150,000 movie screens in the world, with about 40,000 of those in the United States (STID was on 25% of them), the slightly higher number of tickets sold seems just a tiny bit less impressive.

__________________"Shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion." -Thomas Jefferson

Maxwell, I was just considering that the other day, but had no idea how to calculate the price inflation or box office numbers to account for the differences in our currency's value from the earlier productions to the new ones. How did you calculate these numbers?

Oftentimes these newer productions are labeled as "vastly more successful" because of a monetary number without considering that the dollar bought a hell of a lot more 50+ years ago. I always thought that might be a fallacy of sorts but didn't know how to go about proving it.

Maxwell, I was just considering that the other day, but had no idea how to calculate the price inflation or box office numbers to account for the differences in our currency's value from the earlier productions to the new ones. How did you calculate these numbers?

Oftentimes these newer productions are labeled as "vastly more successful" because of a monetary number without considering that the dollar bought a hell of a lot more 50+ years ago. I always thought that might be a fallacy of sorts but didn't know how to go about proving it.

Sure. Here are the wordwide grosses, the average ticket prices and the links where I got the info:

__________________"Shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion." -Thomas Jefferson

His claim that more people saw STID than any other Star Trek movie is true. But it might surprise people that if you take the worldwide grosses of the first Star Trek film in 1979 and the most recent in 2013... and you adjust the gross of TMP for ticket price inflation, you find that roughly the same number of tickets were sold:

ST: TMP: 55,378,486STID: 55,605,904

More or less common knowledge around here. It's also common understanding to take that kind of mathematical hocus-pocus with a grain of salt. Stats like that only account for inflation rates (and not all that accurately) and ignore countless other factors that apply.

So yes, it sold a few hundred thousand more tickets. But when one considers that there are 2.6 billion more people in the world today than in 1979 and there are about 150,000 movie screens in the world, with about 40,000 of those in the United States (STID was on 25% of them), the slightly higher number of tickets sold seems just a tiny bit less impressive.

So yes, it sold a few hundred thousand more tickets. But when one considers that there are 2.6 billion more people in the world today than in 1979 and there are about 150,000 movie screens in the world, with about 40,000 of those in the United States (STID was on 25% of them), the slightly higher number of tickets sold seems just a tiny bit less impressive.

But I think we'd also all agree that there is far more competition for the customer dollar as well.

More or less common knowledge around here. It's also common understanding to take that kind of mathematical hocus-pocus with a grain of salt. Stats like that only account for inflation rates (and not all that accurately) and ignore countless other factors that apply.

You make take it with whichever condiment you prefer. You are also welcome to provide your own more accurate figures.

BillJ wrote:

But I think we'd also all agree that there is far more competition for the customer dollar as well.

True. Nevertheless, Paramount does not seem to have grown their Star Trek movie-going audience much in the intervening three decades, whatever way you want to slice it. I think Abrams was smart to jump ship.

__________________"Shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion." -Thomas Jefferson

True. Nevertheless, Paramount does not seem to have grown their Star Trek movie-going audience much in the intervening three decades, whatever way you want to slice it. I think Abrams was smart to jump ship.

Is he really jumping ship (has it been stated he won't direct?) though if it's his company that is making the third installment and he's a producer?

If he left to direct some no-name film, I'd agree that he may think the franchise doesn't have room for much growth. But he's leaving to direct something that he loves.

True. Nevertheless, Paramount does not seem to have grown their Star Trek movie-going audience much in the intervening three decades, whatever way you want to slice it. I think Abrams was smart to jump ship.

Is he really jumping ship (has it been stated he won't direct?) though if it's his company that is making the third installment and he's a producer?

If he left to direct some no-name film, I'd agree that he may think the franchise doesn't have room for much growth. But he's leaving to direct something that he loves.

Well, currently the rumors are Star Wars VII is unofficially slated for May or December 2015. And Paramount wants Star Trek 3 out for the 50th Anniversary in 2016, so I don't see how he could possibly direct both. Any way you wish to characterize it, the fact is he left Star Trek for Star Wars which stands to make far more money than the next Star Trek film.

__________________"Shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion." -Thomas Jefferson

More or less common knowledge around here. It's also common understanding to take that kind of mathematical hocus-pocus with a grain of salt. Stats like that only account for inflation rates (and not all that accurately) and ignore countless other factors that apply.

You make take it with whichever condiment you prefer. You are also welcome to provide your own more accurate figures.

BillJ wrote:

But I think we'd also all agree that there is far more competition for the customer dollar as well.

True. Nevertheless, Paramount does not seem to have grown their Star Trek movie-going audience much in the intervening three decades, whatever way you want to slice it. I think Abrams was smart to jump ship.

The movie audience has shrunk for a myriad of reasons. It's not a reflection on Star Trek as a franchise.

What IS a reflection of ST is that audiences, especially general ones did NOT want to see the ST movies being made after 1996...the BO grosses were tepid to say the least. By this measure, the fact that ST movies have come so far since that more recent history, is a very positive thing.

__________________
You cannot go against nature
Because when you do
Go against nature
It's part of nature too

Maxwell, I was just considering that the other day, but had no idea how to calculate the price inflation or box office numbers to account for the differences in our currency's value from the earlier productions to the new ones. How did you calculate these numbers?

Oftentimes these newer productions are labeled as "vastly more successful" because of a monetary number without considering that the dollar bought a hell of a lot more 50+ years ago. I always thought that might be a fallacy of sorts but didn't know how to go about proving it.

Sure. Here are the wordwide grosses, the average ticket prices and the links where I got the info:

Without getting into incongruencies with reality and other esoteric horseshit, I still gotta interject that the 139 figure for TMP is WAY WAY less than everybody claimed in the early 80s, when the 175 mil worldwide gross figure was bandied about rather handily.

And if you consider that is back when paramount was TRYING to hide big numbers to avoid paying out net points (something they managed to do up until 1985 or 1986), that they'd let the 175mil stand in STARLOG and pretty much any other mag I saw the number in, I'd figure that is the low-end number.

So how it got downgraded to 139 I really don't know. 139 is actually in keeping with what the domestic total should have been, if you figure about a 2.5X multiplier on the film's rentals, which is how it was reported in VARIETY (the general idea is that 2.5 times rental equals gross -- that was also rather commonly reported back then, along with the gross 2.5 times budget to breakeven as a general principle.) TMP generated 39 mil in rentals just in 79, and a total of I believe 55 mil overall theatrical. 137.5 goes into 55 how many times? 2.5

You can look at Gerrold's old column in STARLOG where as I recall he runs figures much like these proving TMP was well into the green (I think this would have been in 1981 or early 1982.)

All this just makes TMP seem more platinum than golden with respect to current earnings of recent films when inflation and common sense are factored in.

We went through this till we were green in the face in the box-office thread.

You can't compare a movie released in 1979 to one released in 2013. The end. Inflation and population increases mean jack shit.

Yeah, exactly. There is no way to make it apples-to-apples. And a movie matching the theatrical audience of TMP is a major accomplishment (especially considering the much higher home video revenues these days), TMP was a big hit.

trevanian wrote:

So how it got downgraded to 139 I really don't know. 139 is actually in keeping with what the domestic total should have been, if you figure about a 2.5X multiplier on the film's rentals, which is how it was reported in VARIETY (the general idea is that 2.5 times rental equals gross -- that was also rather commonly reported back then, along with the gross 2.5 times budget to breakeven as a general principle.) TMP generated 39 mil in rentals just in 79, and a total of I believe 55 mil overall theatrical. 137.5 goes into 55 how many times? 2.5.

I think the rental multiplier for TMP was much less than 2.5. Subsequent Trek movies had around a 2 multiplier (e.g. TWOK 80M boxoffice, 40M rentals) but there was more interest in TMP among theater owners than other Trek movies so Paramount was able to get better rental deals for it. The final TMP rentals reported by Paramount was 56M. I don't think TMP made 112M domestically but it certainly did better than the 82M that is now assumed to be it's final domestic boxoffice, probably more in the 90M-100M range.